University of Northern Colorado men’s basketball team pummels NAIA opponent

Sunday afternoon was slightly better than a walk in the park for the University of Northern Colorado men's basketball team.

Fully rested — on a seven-day hiatus — and in need of some floor time, the Bears unloaded on NAIA Oklahoma Panhandle State University 104-53 at Bank of Colorado Arena.

The victory improves the Bears to 7-3 while OPSU, which listed the game as an exhibition on its schedule, is 8-2.

Literally, after the first five minutes of action, the game resembled a competitive scrimmage for the Bears.

"I'm glad how the stats came out," said UNC freshman Jalen Sanders, who had a game-high 21 points to go with nine rebounds, three assists and three steals. Sanders was 9 for 12 from the floor.

"For what we asked then to do … what the game plan was, we executed it to a T," UNC coach Jeff Linder said. "That's a team that's dangerous on 3s. We did a good job of keeping them off the 3-point line."

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OPSU was coming off an upset victory over the No. 1-ranked NAIA team in the nation — Texas Wesleyan — and had also beaten NCAA Division II Southwest Oklahoma. It played without its second leading scorer, guard DK Sumo, who was injured.

Linder used all 13 players, emptying the bench earlier than normal as the Bears stretched the lead to 53 points with 7 minutes, 8 seconds left to play.

"The way they started though, No. 0 (Jace Kerr) was hitting everything," said UNC guard Chaz Glotta, who came off the bench for 15 points, including 4 for 8 from beyond the arc. "He's a big part of their offense. The other players have to feed off of him." Kerr finished with 13 points while guard Tyler Pate added 12.

"Other than that, they don't have a lot of options," Glotta said. "We shut that down pretty early and that's when they struggled to score."

Linder was pleased with his team's 53.4 percent shooting from the floor, its huge advantage on the boards and attention to detail as it awaits the University of Nebraska-Omaha on Wednesday night.

"Our thing is to shoot the right shots," Linder said. "Our guys understand (the difference between) a right shot and a shot that's OK. A shot that's just OK is a bad shot. Over the last three or four games, we're shooting the right shots.

"It was good for out guys to see the ball go back in the hole," Linder added.